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1 May 2006 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouA satisfactory set of fantasies (with third coming next summer) that still boggles my mind that it's published by Harlequin (okay, Luna, a subset of Harlequin), but come on. Both that, err, I bought Harlequin, and that Harlequin would print this.
Kallista is a magic-user, guarded by her personal bodyguard, Torchay; while using magic, she's focused on that and Torchay keeps her in one piece while she's preoccupied. When the story opens, their country is under attack, they're in the capital city, and Kallista does something that wipes out most of the attacking army and leaves her with a strange compass-rose tattoo on her neck.
One soldier from the opposite army survives, and has been marked with a rose tattoo. The country's ruler decides this is all For A Reason, and insists Kallista and Stone...get married.
See, in this world, groups of people marry, and raise children together, sharing duties and skills--and sex--as the individual groups decide. Most pairings, err, quadrings? are four people; Kallista's group by the end is six people, IIRC. But, y'know, god, but anyway...hello, Harlequin printed this! Wah.
It does have the old standby of matriarchal society vs. patriarchal (with castes), but Dayton doesn't harp on that, nor does Kallista's matriarchal society get written as a utopia. It's got flaws, too, though it's far more idyllic in some respects (with bigger emphasis on business/trade) than its warlike neighbor. That doesn't remain the focus, though, in the second book, to my relief; by that point, the conflict has become interior to the country.
Where the first book's emotional crux is on Torchay and Kallista dealing with teh change in their relationship from magician/guard to lovers (and a good dose of well-handled angst as each tries to rationalize liking/not-liking as part of duty), the second book fleshes out the rest of the characters -- but that's not to say any really get short-shrift in the first book, either.
The real danger with a character like Kallista is that with all this ability to do magic, she'll end up being mary-sue-ish, but she has soldier's ability to speak too bluntly at points, foot-in-mouth, which creates conflicts of her own doing that she must then muddle through and figure out. The jealousies and internal strife in the group are well-done, respectful, explorative, with different reactions from each person and different means by which they come to grips with the setup.
And not all of them are raised from birth socialized to it, either; several of the characters struggle mightily with balancing their attraction for one member of the group with their unease at being part of the group. So far, I think it's both a fast-paced, well-characterized and thoughtful fantasy that has a great deal more character development than you'd expect in a romance.
The one peculiar stylistic trait that threw me at times was that Dayton will end a chapter, and the first scene of the next chapter is a direct continuation of the previous scene. It wasn't always because the last line needed a particularly strong beat, either; it felt more like someone said, "okay! 4K! Cut there and start new chapter!" Odd, for the pacing while reading. But this didn't bother me too much given I was reading so fast, anyway.
Oh, and I should mention the humor in this, and the dialogue, is top-notch. Very well done, excellent ear.
But! The sex scenes, verrrry hawt. Rawr.
I'm not sure if I liked this more or less than the first book. It took a bit more to get into, for some reason, and the story felt smaller, somehow. It stays so tightly to one character's POV, which doesn't travel quite so far or have as much access to information, that in contrast it didn't feel as expansive.
Anyway, Ista is a former queen, no longer mad now the family's curse is lifted, but left to rot surrounded by overly-protective attendants who only remember her days of madness. In desperation, she hits on the notion of taking a pilgrimage as a way to travel quietly and without her overbearing ladies-in-waiting. Naturally it all goes wrong, pretty fast.
Major pluses: Ista isn't some 20-yr old bimbo; she's forty, a widow, a mother of two, and has a sharp, sarcastic, intelligent perspective on life. She also has some of the best lines, like the one (I paraphrase badly) about "if the gods give you a gift, accept it with both hands...and then throw it away from you as hard as you can."
She's not at all reverent or accepting of her plight as god-touched, and pretty much tells one of the gods where he can stick it. Even when the story lagged for any reason (in few places, but still), her voice carried it without a problem.
I'm gonna say this one right off: the first third of the book? I could've cut out half of it and not missed it; it's two (or more) parallel threads. I must have put the book down and picked it back up at least four or five times, before getting past that to where the story finally finds its groove.
The only thread in the first third that makes any sense is Stepovich's, the cop; the gypsy's storyline mostly consists of the guy wandering around Lakota, Ohio trying to remember his own name, what he had for breakfast, where he is, etc. I really only needed one, maybe two scenes of that.
And then there's a boatload of various other elliptical, overly-mysterious scenes from other folks, which seem to amount to the same thing: here I am, wonder what's going on. The cop's story is the only one with any concrete sense, so I was drawn into him, most.
First, Lakota, Ohio? Hunh? Basic plot: some chick, Luci -- a rough parallel to the devil -- has risen from the world below through the world tree and is going to take over this world. So she starts in...Ohio. Riiiiiight. I mean, I would say Chicago, London, maybeLos Angeles, NYC, even Toronto, Paris, good grief, people, why Ohio? If I wanted a thousand minions, I'd go to Ohio, too, I guess; it worked for the Republicans, after all. *cough*
But what really got on my nerves, strangely, was that parts I think I was supposed to find, oh, I don't know, funny, or witty, I just found annoying after a bit. Too clever by half, as the Brits might say: every scene got its own title, "mid-day, autumn" for one, then the next "18 October", then the next "2300 hours, october" whatever. By the last chapters and the showdown, the scenes are all labeled "sometime". Uh, okay.
More than that, though, were the excessive lyrics. I can handle lyrics or quotes or whatever at the beginning of chapters. No problemo. But between every scene, with the scene title, then not just two lines o' song but four, six, sometimes eight, and then the song title -- I kept thinking, am I going to be tested on this? What the hell does this have to do with the frickin' story? Shut up already.
Then I read the about-the-authors page and discovered the music they're quoting is what they've written themselves. Okay, I don't mind self-referential but there's a difference between a soft tweak and a frickin' punch-me-in-the-nose with the pretentiousness. Oi, shut up already, it's like a bad songfic now: if you can write well, I should not need a soundtrack to hum along; the story should stand on its own.
I'm never quite certain about the two-author part, who did what, though the story's style is pretty seamless. But the cop's involvement felt a bit contrived at times, and without spoilers, there were points where I felt like conflict was introduced -- however superficially -- just to drag things out further. Put that sensation together with the excess use o' quotes, and it felt like the book could've been a bit shorter and not been missing.
In fact, it could've been just as long, but with more time spent on the non-mystical characters, who at points seemed to be the only ones driving the story forward, while the mystical characters all stood around and looked confused, underworked, and remarkably like cardboard.
A real pity, too, there might have been some potential, but it ended up feeling like a silk purse made out of a verrry small sow's ear, that couldn't bear up under the weight of the setup, when you see the plot from behind.
Sequel, more Temeraire! Woo! Definitely a higher price paid in this one, which gave it a bit more of a whallop at times. Basically, a foreign country had given Temeraire's egg to the French, and upon learning the Brits have the dragon, that country wants the dragon back, thank-you-very-much. When Temeraire refuses to go without Lawrence, off they all go on a long trek to take Temeraire home.
Between threats on Lawrence's life and Lawrence's own questions about what's best for Temeraire, there are a few points where Novik manages to keep it pretty much in the air as to how things will resolve. She does a pretty good job of hiding the herrings and throwing in misleads; she also focuses a great deal more on battles, but I like that part.
It's not easy, I would imagine, writing the mid-point story of a three-book series, but she manages to pull it off without giving too much of an info dump, yet not expecting you to have read everything. Skillful.
Still an A+ recommendation, folks. Read the first, then read this one.
To be honest, I'm only about halfway through this one. But! But! Norse mythology, science, suspense, romance, and fantasy, wah, and the suspense is seriously creepy. Plus, Loki. Wah. Anyway, Victoria Scott accepts a trainee position at a meteorological station in Norway, in an isolated place called Othinsey (Odin's Island).
Unbeknowst to her, she's the reincarnation of a woman loved by an Aenir, a thousand years ago. Odin wants her dead, her former lover wants her to fall in love with him again (but can't tell her anything, of course), and Victoria's absolutely positive she doesn't believe in anything that can't be proven with magic.
The Norse parts are a little slower, but crafted well -- Vadir who misses his Halla (now Victoria); Aud, the servant in love with Vadir; Loki, who just wants to cause trouble. Loki's alternate cruelty and humor come across as integral parts, instead of just psychotic. Vadir is a complex character who doesn't give everything away right off the bat.
Victoria is utterly believable and fascinating and prickly -- very much a character I could see someone finding attractive, being intelligent, sharp, solid, and a scientist's willingness to consider but wanting the evidence.
But I'll report back on that one, when I'm done.
Yes, yes, it's a werewolf book. Blame
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sarolynne that I read it. Quick, easy read, pretty much. Mercy (whose real name, Mercedes, was a bit too much of a tweak to also have her become a mechanic, but whatevah) is a skinwalker who can become a coyote; she lives next door to the alpha of a wolf pack. When a newbie werewolf shows up needing help (and then is almost killed), Mercy gets drawn into some wolf-plot that looks like it's one thing, then maybe another, then a third interpretation. Briggs does a good job of keeping the options open enough that nothing was fully obvious.
There's some romance, but more an implication of possible romance; the real focus is on the action. Not a great deal of character development, not to the extent I really like, but like Saro, I have to give more than a hat-tip to the fact that Briggs didn't make the weres into a utopia.
They're homophobic, patriarchal, often narrow-minded hidebound creatures, with exceptions like strong women or gay wolves being far and few between. I really don't like when magical creatures have all the peace/love/whatevah; if they were so awesome, you'd think everyone would have joined the damn commune.
But mostly this is an action book, and if that's what you want, go for it. There were a few points I wanted more exploration, and the book's not that long. It could have handled it, especially since Briggs introduces characters who have nothing to do with the main storyline.
Best example is the undercover cop that Mercy recognizes from job to job, by his scent (coyote, after all). It felt like the cop came in as a red herring and then was left out of it, or cut out in revisions, or possibly introduced so he's already in place for a sequel. Not sure. I guess I'd give this one a B, if i were all about the grades.
I'm not even linking to it on Amazon. I paid $2 for my copy and that's about $1.50 too much, and I'm being generous. The book feels squalid. I still don't know if it's "based on a true story" -- it was marketed as fiction, and written as fiction, but man. It just feels like... oh, hell. It's like, if a character is hopeless, why should I bother reading?
I must have put this book down at least ten times, and picked it back up each time only because I'd read everything else in the stack. Cripes. It was that, or read the thesaurus. Anyway.
Kristin Cates is 22, becomes an undercover cop, falls in love with her partner, gets hired to work with him on a major undercover sting, gets introduced to and hooked on drugs by aforementioned partner-lover, all while being pressured by the eager-for-promotion acting chief to bring in some porn guy for whom Kristin & her lover can't even prove does drugs -- and the guy won't even go near them.
Wozencraft writes it like this is all an indictment of the drug wars, but I don't see that. I see it as one big indictment of the tunnel-vision, local good old boys attempt to fight the drugs wars, while seeing their own cops as expendable, and not giving a damn about what happens outside the county line.
Halfway through the book, Kristin's writing arrest warrants not just for the thirty-something dealers they've found, but all the way down to the folks who've bought a dime of pot, no more. Yeah, arrest the potheads, but she's also working for an acting chief who gives them the keys to the evidence room, drugs and all. Hello.
So it feels squalid, like, shit, if you arrest all the drug dealers, you're still a damn drug addict yourself. Is that something so great to live for?
And at any point where Kristin might get ahead, even by a hair, Wozencraft smacks her down again. I get the "throw rocks at your characters" but when the book ends and the character is still in the tree, I just feel gypped.
Don't get me wrong, I adored Raymond Chandler, and his influence is clear in Green's story. I just wonder whether I accidentally picked up the wrong book, as in, not the first in a series, or something. There's nothing on any of the books that says 'start here' so I just grabbed one that seemed interesting.
Private eye, John Taylor, is asked to find a runaway teenager in the Nightside, London's mystical/fae underbelly, where the fae-world is synonymous with underworld in the crime sense, along with a solid dose of the surreal, violent, drug-addled, and a dose o' whacked subculture. Or something.
I would suspect it's the first book, since we get the girl's mother tagging along, with John Taylor acting as her guide. He's a finder; his gift is to find things, simple enough. But he's also left behind a lot of enemies (of course), though he tries to do good (of course), but the world is far more gray than topsiders realize (of course). All the classic cliches are in there, and it'd make for a great mix except... Taylor won't shut up.
No, really. A new character shows up, looking all dangerous, and Taylor proceeds to spend four pages introducing him, in dialogue, to the client. Meanwhile the new guy just stands there. That's the top example, but he does it repeatedly through the story, in points where I'm expecting high tension! scary moment! chips are down! and I get a six-line paragraph of Taylor...talking.
And explaining, always frickin' explaining. At least Raymond Chandler could work in such explanations in the narrative, considerably shorter at that, without the need to spout off.
Hell, Taylor'd be one of my enemies just for never shutting his trap. Sheesh, people.
It's not that this slows down the action so much (it does, a lot), but when you throw in that Taylor's constantly going on about "everything's scared of me" and then we see the baddies being, well, scared, I'm like: so? What has he done?
At first I was intrigued, but when no payoff showed up to make me say, ah, maybe that's the reason, I started getting annoyed. I suppose if it'd been raised and dropped, that's one thing; I'm not really one for getting a long, involved back story that explains everything but the final answer -- if you're going to talk that much, go ahead and say the rest.
I prefer my characters recalcitrant and reticent, if they're reluctant to talk. I don't like it when characters say, especially repeatedly, "well, there's a reason I'm X, Y, Z, but I won't talk about that." Fine, then, shut up and get along!
If I'd wanted a tour guide to a world in which yet another London has yet another underground mystical fae-related world, I would've bought Rough Guide to London Fairy Rings or something. At least then I wouldn't have gotten a four-page, cliche-laden, too-impressed-with-itself introduction to some character who then bloody well walks away after only six lines of dialogue. Cripes!
Pity, too; with a bit more of Chandler's succinct balance, the story might've had more room for something other than posturing.
Oh, and editors? When the paperback book is only three-quarters of an inch thick, and every chapter ends on the right and then there's a blank page so the chapters all start on the right... I'm not fooled, people. I can see you're using a page-and-a-half of blank space as filler. What is this, a book that's only 65K but you want it look like 85K?
Enough already. Get John to cut out about half his dialogue, beef up the plot so there's more than just a linear timeline with minor digressions to hint at future stories, and drop the space-filler nonsense.
Sad, since I do like the challenge of a good cross-genre mix, but in this case? Not impressed.
It's amazing how cranky I get these days at the really stupid copy-editor (or simply author) mistakes: mispellings, wrong character attribution (Mom speaking when dialogue is clearly daughter's), name change (Officer Cleary to Officer Clearly and back again), that sort of thing. Bleah. Back to reading Giants of the Frost, since it, at least, has shown no misspellings so far...
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Date: 3 May 2006 01:01 am (UTC)sexromance fans who thought there was too much fantasy!I thought it did quite well presenting an adult-level fantasy novel, with well-written, tasteful but none of that "fade to black" bullcrap, because hello, I'm not five. I can handle the sex scenes -- and the ones included did all have character development occuring as a result of the sex or in tandem with it. They weren't really superfluous.